It has been almost three years (!) since I last had any coffee from Velton’s and this one has been killing it as espresso and drip here at World Domination HQ, so let’s get into this current Rwandan offering from Velton’s, thanks to the good people at MyCoffeePub.com!
Purchase this coffee directly for $15.75/12 oz (other options available)
Brief Live in Everett story on Velton’s
MYCOFFEEPUB MARCH 2018: VELTON’S COFFEE ROASTING CO. RWANDA NYAMASHEKE KANZU
Velton Ross, owner/roaster/blender/expediter at Velton’s Coffee Roasting Co., has been in coffee since around 1989 when he moved to Seattle for college. Since then he has lived and worked in many places and at some point along this spectrum, Velton’s Coffee Roasting Co. was born. Velton takes supreme care in selecting and roasting coffee and his blends have won awards. This morning we’re taking a look at Velton’s current Rwandan offering, the Nyamasheke Kanzu, which was the March selection for MyCoffeePub.com subscribers. MyCoffeePub is a monthly subscription where one surprise bag of coffee lands on your doorstep around the middle of the month. I love this subscription because it’s always a surprise and the guys at MCP have great taste in coffee and always pick winners. Sometimes they’re from well-known roasters and other times they are very local, very small/new roasters very few people know about, but they always pick nice coffees from excellent artisans.
Sadly, I’ve only had Velton’s coffee one other time, WAY back in May 2015, and that was a MyCoffeePub subscription pick, too! AND that was also a Rwandan coffee! LOL What are the chances? I really hope to reach out to Velton and see if I can get some more coffees to share with you folks because I know he almost singlehandedly put Mexican Nayarita on the map and his Bonsai Blend espresso is supposed to be killer. We’ll see! Getting back to this morning’s coffee, this is a washed French Mission Bourbon variety grown around massive Lake Kivu in Rwanda. Like a lot of African coffee regions, Rwandan farms tend to be small, so many farmers work together in co-ops that own washing and processing equipment. Kanzu washing station is located in the western province of Nyamasheke, which makes up a good portion of Lake Kivu’s southeastern coast. Coffee grows around 1800-2100masl there and the local population subsists on agriculture, with coffee being their most important cash crop. Kanzu has won awards in the past and ranked highly in Golden Cup and Cup of Excellence competitions/auctions.
Velton gives us tasting notes of, “candied lemon, dark cherry, and dried peach” for this coffee. I’m using my standard pourover setup of a 1:16 ratio of 28g of coffee to 450g of Third Wave Water in a notNeutral Gino dripper with Kalita 185 filter. Grinder is an Aergrind by Knock and my brews came in around 3:30, not including a 30 second bloom. I also really enjoyed this coffee over the weekend as espresso and I’ll share some flavor notes and preparation methods on that topic at the end of this article.
The aroma of this coffee has some deeply caramelized sugars, hints of citrus and dates, as far as my brain and nose are concerned. The body on this coffee lands right between medium and light for me, although the flavors tend to “dig into” my palate and have a more substantial present than the light mouthfeel of this coffee tells me they should have. Immediately in my initial sip there is a sweet lemon acidity that is really at the forefront of the flavor profile, and this carries all the way through to the finish and into the aftertaste, too. That lemon is quite aggressive (in a delicious way), but it’s nicely balanced at the same time by a caramel sweetness that conjures up images of sweet baked goods like sugar cookies, too. This coffee has a sweet finish and in the last vestiges of it as it’s leaving my mouth, I get flashes of baking spices as the aftertaste starts up. In the second half of the sip there is a peach note that seemed subtle at first, but now that I’m thinking about it and looking for it in the cup, it’s super-apparent. I don’t think I’ve ever had dried peaches like Velton’s descriptor, but I can say this peach is different from the peach-forward coffees I always love. There is a different “depth” to it and it’s a little less clear and bright and seems denser and sweeter somehow, so perhaps the more concentrated, sweeter flavors that tend to happen with drying fruit does apply here. In any case, there is a lovely peach note that comes out in the mid sip and it’s delicious and I love it!
Despite all that lemon acidity, this coffee has a real depth and almost “brooding” presence as far as flavors go, which is a cool contrast to the brightness and “happiness” of the sweet lemon high notes. This is a really nice coffee… REALLY nice. This is another one like a lot of coffees I’ve been having recently that is quite highly complex and yet remains totally accessible and drinkable at the same time and that’s somewhat rare, although I have experienced a bunch of them recently. I almost never drink coffee with food but something about this one is telling me that this would be really nice as a dessert coffee and with other foods, too. You’ll have to try that out and report back and let the rest of our readers know if that’s the case!
As far as espresso goes, that was how I did most of my tasting of this coffee. I posted several photos recently of this espresso on Instagram, so head over there to find them. I received it last Thursday, I believe, and on weekends I tend to drink mostly espresso, assuming I have something in the house that works. Visually this looked like a potentially good roast for a single origin espresso and it never hurts to experiment when you have a whole bag of coffee to play with! After a couple dial in shots I was getting very delicious results with about 18-19g in, 35-38g out in around 27 seconds (I only set the timer as I was dialing in, then I switched to keeping time in my head for the rest of my shots over the weekend). Crema is nice for a single origin espresso and the body is thick and velvety on these shots, even pulling at a 1:2 ratio. I picked up lots of molasses and really dark sugars, some roasty notes and lots of dark fruits like plums and figs and things like that. Nice balance, very drinkable with a bit of lemon in the top end still, but not so much to pucker up. This worked really well for my tastes as espresso, so for me, picking this coffee up from Velton’s is a no-brainer. If it were me ordering, I’d get the Nayarita and Bonsai Blend, too, and just devote a full month to Velton’s coffee!